-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Every American community has its borders .

Manhattan , for example , has East 96th Street . It divides , in a squishy and always-changing sort of way , East Harlem , the poorest neighborhood on the island , from the Upper East Side , which is among the wealthiest . Stand on the street and you 'll see people crossing from one world to the other in both directions . But the boundary does have real meaning for some .

This summer , I met Giovanni Classen , a young father and college student who was living in one of the public housing projects in East Harlem . He told me he once took a girlfriend on a date on the Upper East Side . The questioning stares of richer New Yorkers tainted the experience . His date 's interest in window shopping did n't help either .

Across 96th , he felt different . Or was made to feel that way .

The river , the highway , the tracks .

All of these unspoken lines have shaped American consciousness . This is increasingly true in the age of income inequality .

As the gap between rich and poor continues to grow , so does the gulf in understanding between the classes .

We 're not helped by the fact that , as Harvard 's Michael Norton put it to me , the ends of the income spectrum are mostly invisible . We do n't see billionaires picking up their morning papers . The extremely poor are among the most stigmatized groups in the United States . We see past them , as one man who works in Chelsea , the ritzy-poor Manhattan neighborhood , told me recently . We pretend they 're not there , that these divisions do n't exist in the richest country in the world .

Maybe one way to help shrink the gap between rich and poor , then , is simply to stare these divisions right in the face -- to remind ourselves that these boundaries were created and can be erased .

To that end , I 'd like to invite you to participate in a collaborative storytelling experiment called `` Cross the Gap . ''

Here 's how to participate :

1 . Take a photo of something that divides your community .

2 . Upload the image to CNN iReport or to an online social network .

3 . Include the hashtag #crossthegap with your submission .

4 . In the caption , write why this particular thing -- it could be a highway , a sign , a language barrier , a park , a building , whatever -- divides your community . Say a little bit about yourself or your hometown . Which side of the gap do you inhabit ? And what could you do to help make that barrier less formal or significant ?

I 'll give a few examples to help clear things up . In Oklahoma City , where I used to live , the Oklahoma River and Interstate 40 broadly split the community in two . Everyone asks whether you 're from the north side or the south . The social circles are pretty different .

In Lake Providence , Louisiana , where I traveled recently to report a story on income inequality , a beautiful , cypress-lined lake largely separates rich from poor .

And New York is a maze of shifting and unspoken dividers . Go to Chelsea and you 'll find blocks where the rich and poor stare at each other out of their windows .

I 'm excited to see what you come up with for this assignment . As you take the photos , I 'd ask you to think about the economic and cultural forces that keep us apart -- and what each of us could do to bring everyone , regardless of income , closer together .

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of John D. Sutter .

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The rich-poor gap in the United States has been widening since the 1970s

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John Sutter asks readers to help narrow the gap

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Sutter : Take a photo of something that divides your community

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Upload the images to CNN iReport or to social networks with the hashtag #crossthegap